In Evelyn Waugh’s “Scott-King’s Modern Europe,” a school’s headmaster and Scott-King, the classics teacher, discuss the declining enrollment in Latin and Greek classes. The headmaster wishes to do away with the classics: “Parents aren’t interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more. They want to qualify their boys for the modern world.” He then asks if Scott-King might teach history and economics. He refuses.
“Then what do you intend to do?”
